


tomorrow is counting on me to learn my lessons today

by Hecate



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator Salvation (2009)
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:58:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lost his heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tomorrow is counting on me to learn my lessons today

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made. Title is from Bekka Bramlett's We All Fall Down.

They bury Marcus Wright like a man. Earth to earth, dust to dust, metal to metal, and John stays at the pathetic little gathering of stones and soil that mark his grave even after Blair left. He stays and stares and whispers, "Thank you." to the body beneath. 

When he leaves, his steps are heavy. He's tired, too tired, and he knows he'll spend the next days in a bed, Kate hovering around him all the time.

He needed to say his good-byes standing.

***

The heart in his chest beats like a drum of war, steady and loud, and he wonders what Kate thinks when she presses her ear to his skin. If it is John she's listening to or Marcus.

Maybe, it's both of them, forever entangled in John's body and the thought is like fire in his stomach, a fire that runs deeper still. It makes him reach for Kate and touch her harder, fuck her to the rhythm of a heart not his own.

When he comes, he sees red eyes and metal, Kate's smile and Marcus' glare, Judgment Day exploding all around him.

*** 

'Dad,' he almost says to Kyle, 'Daddy', but he bites on his lips, swallows the word. Kyle is not his father, not yet, and in too many ways he'll never be.

John watches out for Kyle now, calls him 'Kid' and laughs at his scowl. He doesn't love him, can't love him because he will kill him. 

But he watches him, always.

***

He lost his heart to the Terminators when one of them impaled him between metal and death, Marcus dying at his side.

He lost his heart to the Terminators when he was a child, holding on to the T-800 that saved him. The model that will kill him. It doesn't seem to matter.

***

They find a graveyard of metal, skeletons shot to pieces, arms and legs; and they stop and stare.

"Elephants," Kyle says and John remembers this from the time before Skynet took control. Elephant bones and memories of TV documentaries showing how they wander off to die, and it scares him that Terminators act like living creatures.

"Junkyard," Barnes says and the knot inside of John's stomach disappears.

"Yes," he says out loud and they search through the pieces for something they can use.

***

He gives Sarah's picture to Kyle and watches his face as his father sees his mother for the first time. It's twisted, it's wrong, but he has to make sure. He has to make sure that Kyle will save him.

***

Metal fingers, cruel and elegant, and John intertwines his own with them, stares at the contrast.

It's a talisman, this severed hand, a proof of victory he took off the first T-600 he killed. This mockery of a human limb has killed so many of their own, crushed and torn humans apart, blood running over the gleaming steel. They turned the game around, their guns enough to destroy the Terminator. They won.

Metal clasped in his hand and it looks so right. Metal wrapped around his cock, and John comes in a dark hallway, his scream swallowed by his fist. 

***

His mother told him not to believe in fate. The words she held on to, always, the words that were tattooed into his mind.

'No fate," John tells himself. 'Choice.'

He sends Kyle back in time.

*** 

Blair dies of an infected cut, a silly death and yet so common now. Blair dies, and if they could still find Marcus' grave they would bury her at his side.

Instead, she's buried among her own. Inside John's chest, Marcus' heart stutters.

***

The T-800 throws him across the room with ease and John gets up on his feet again.

"Don't," he says as it approaches again. 'Dad,' is the word he swallows, images of a car drive flashing through his mind. 'I taught you 'Hasta la vista,’' John thinks and springs the trap that will change everything.

Later, he tells the T-800 his old address from fading memory, pushes the right buttons and sends the Terminator to save his younger self.

'Choice,' he tells himself and laughs.

***

Another victory paid with blood, his hands slippery and red from it, and he drags a soldier to Kate's team, putting him down between the other bodies. Half-dead, all of them, and in some hours some won't be even that.

He flees the groans and screams of the room, the curses and whispers that fill the hallways, and he finds his room, empty and bare. He reaches for his talisman, the metal cool and clean against his heated skin.

*** 

John's daughter learns to walk among the rubble of the past, learns to run in the darkness of the tunnels that protect them. She hunts coyotes and plays with broken toys and broken metal. John tells her of Pinocchio and remembers Marcus and the T-800 that died for him. They all die for him.

He named her Sarah but no one calls her that.

***

He forgot how to sleep deeply years ago, they all did, but for him it's worse. It's worse because Marcus' heart keeps him awake, beating too loud to dream, to think, to do anything. It's worse because he has to lead them and his steps grow heavier with every night.

Kate worries and he smiles for her.

***

He's surrounded but escapes, another daring stunt, another legend to tell.

"I'm a myth," he tells his heartbeat, looking into the mirror and seeing himself as a hollow shell. "I'm not even real."

***

John sees the T-X that will kill Kate's father from afar and stops. Time is running out.

***

The other T-800 is a familiar face in the factory and John steps closer. "I'm tired," he tells it and doesn't run when it closes the distance between them. He leans in when it reaches out, closes his eyes as its hand trails over his face. Around him, the steps of metal echo and he doesn't need to open his eyes to know that he's surrounded again.

It doesn't matter. Not anymore.

He steps away from his Terminator slowly, looks at him and looks at the red eyes watching him. He thinks of Kate and knows she's strong enough. He thinks of his daughter and knows they will win.

"John Connor," the T-800 says and John dreamt of this voice for years. He nods.

"It's time," he says and smiles, metal all around him. He's done being a legend.

Time to become real again.


End file.
